“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and the realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

-Rachel Carson

“We are who we are waiting for

We can make a change”

-the author, singing to his daughter recently

There’s a storm coming, folks. The police state has already been with us awhile now. The two attacks in the UK could be a preview of things to come, even across the pond, here in the US.

Just two weeks before the UK elections, we’ve seen two horrific incidents in Manchester and London. Is this a coincidence? One wonders whether these attacks have been orchestrated or allowed to happen by the US-UK intelligence services to swing the vote towards Theresa May. The most recent attack on June 3rd could even be a distraction from Trump’s reneging on the Paris Agreement. Or perhaps the play is to ratchet up public fear for a possible US-UK-backed war against Syria or Iran. How deep down the rabbit hole are you prepared to look?

In a recent essay, John Pilger destroys the UK official narrative that Abedi, the supposed perpetrator of the Manchester bombing, wasn’t well known among intelligence agencies. If Abedi, his father, and other Libyan jihadis were allowed travel all over the UK and Europe, it’s fairly certain they were some sort of patsies or agents of UK spymasters and their military-corporate overlords. At least one of the London attackers was also reported to the authorities, who apparently did nothing.

Don’t be so naïve to think that it couldn’t happen this way. Since WWII, the Anglo-American axis has destroyed North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the list goes on. US-UK black ops have been coordinating and killing anti-capitalists, revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, and human rights activists like Oscar Romero for decades. US intelligence has in the past cooked up such treachery and villainy as Operation Northwoods, the attack on the USS Liberty, almost certainly was involved in JFK’s assassination, and has overthrown and killed elected leaders in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, the Congo, Haiti, and more.

Soon, there could easily be a lockdown in London, perhaps in other UK cities, in France and/or Germany, and possibly even here in the US if things deteriorate. The blowback from our wars in the Middle East and North Africa region are coming back to haunt us with a vengeance.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the necessary urgency among many self-described Leftists, activists, and journalists, even those in the alternative media.

I don’t mean to scare, my aim is to prepare. We all have to start making preparations to transform our lives, individually and collectively.

For starters, peace activists must form a movement to remove all NATO troops from the most severe conflict areas: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Further, we must vacate all US bases from overseas, and put an end to the multiplying special operations around the world and increasingly in Africa, as Nick Turse explains here.

The media is going to do everything it can to spook us into submission, into obeying the orders of our politicians. We must resist this mainstream “culture of fear”. This fear is pervasive in mainstream politics.

There is a sort of sixth sense that we all have, observing the energies that different people give off, which cannot be quantified or empirically observed by science, yet exists nonetheless. There’s a sort of ominous aura that emanates from mainstream talking heads as well as our political and military leaders.

There is very low frequency energy; fearful, dark, unstable energetic vibrations occurring when you watch a blowhard imperialist on CNN or Fox News, or watch a leader such as Trump, Obama, Bush, or Clinton speak. The same applies to foreign leaders like Xi, Duterte, Putin, Erdogan. They worship power and money. Passively viewed by millions who accept their arguments based on authority, this dark energy is disseminated and transferred, the populace inculcated to support the leader’s worldview, and compassionate humanitarian instincts atrophy.

Power is given to an unaccountable few, trauma is transmitted, societies become divided, democracy is shattered, the fear and blood-craving is reproduced, and you’ve created an obedient mass of killers, and those too cowardly to speak out against the atrocities. There are so many little Eichmanns now, around the world.

To rise above this, anti-war activists and non-violent protestors must continue the epic struggle to raise consciousness, to continue to give off “good vibrations”. Part of that means not being frustrated and outraged over every political fiasco: there is nothing new here, those in power are simply doing what they’ve always done, spreading chaos and death.

Activists must begin to hold attention. The technocratic neoliberal era is waning, and right-wing authoritarians are ascending power worldwide. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event of our planet, with species disappearing at about 1000 times the background rate. Overpopulation and lack of resources are fueling ethnic conflicts in Syria and South Sudan, most notably. There must be a voluntary worldwide acknowledgment to begin lowering the world’s population right now, to avoid ecosystem destruction and present and future human generations from the ever-increasing chances of mass devastation.

This year, twenty million people are at risk of starving, the highest since WWII. The world is soon headed for another large-scale recession at the least, despite what the Wall Street lucre-worshippers may say. Most of the developing world has been dealing with imperialism and colonialism for centuries. They know collapse, because they’ve always been living in it, as have their ancestors.

The predictable repressive and authoritarian response to come by the UK government in response to these attacks can be viewed as a form of social collapse. It reveals a cultural deafness, and a lack of critical thought in regard to the plight of those killed, maimed, and traumatized by war. It also reveals a wide-ranging ignorance of how Western-NATO backed war fans the flames of hatred and terrorism. Immigrants, refugees, minorities, and terrorists are denounced as invaders, as inherently “evil”, with no social or historical analysis as to the root causes.

Neoliberalism now lies in ruins. The oppressive propaganda of mainstream media is no longer working, and Western populaces are revolting, although the true enemies, sexism, racism, class warfare, poverty, and militarism, are not addressed. The real issues have been displaced by the elite one-percenters and their quislings, who conjure up pseudo-conflicts in order to distract from the real issues of our age.

This is the sort of social disintegration that Nietzsche foresaw when he defined the “Last Man”, the coward who will always choose comfort, security, and material affluence over the hard struggle for liberation of the human spirit. With the socio-cultural collapse already well underway, and no left movement to hit the brakes on neoliberal globalization, the material and economic collapse is the next logical step, and nearly inevitable at this point.

Of course, the crumbling of the empire will fall hardest on the developing world, and if systemic change doesn’t occur, the West will continue to lie, turn its eyes away, obfuscate, and give token gestures to those less fortunate in order to assuage its own guilt.

Another aspect to consider is that presidents and prime ministers get what they want, if not in the legislature, but in the realm of geopolitics. Many times, it would seem they don’t even have to ask. Thus, we can imagine that just as some statements are dog-whistles for voters, other public speeches could be considered dog-whistles for the military and intelligence communities.

When May calls for a “strong and stable” country, when Trump tweets that “if we don’t get smart it will only get worse” regarding terrorism, one can imagine fascist spooks and military officers would be willing, if not outright excited, to conspire to carry out false flags on behalf of their authoritarian masters.

Only a civically engaged and vigilant, united public can combat such barbarism. It must be acknowledged that if the US and UK governments are willing to commit mass atrocities abroad; there is no reason to believe they haven’t and will not try it domestically, to rally support for an ever-expanding police state.

There isn’t time to wait around to elect a new congress or president: our representatives are controlled by corporations and lobbyists in the current system. Only a mass protest movement, coordinated in all major cities and Washington DC, practicing nonviolence and civil disobedience, and promoting egalitarian democracy, social justice, and ecological wisdom, will be able to smash the power structure.

The time to act is now, the stakes have never been higher, and there are no superhero saviors waiting in the wings: we are who we’ve been waiting for.